for centuries. There were winding streets, and hundreds of dead ends and small alleyways that went nowhere in particular. Minarets poked up into the sky everywhere you looked, from small wooden mosques, brick ones the size of bungalows, and great big fuck-off ones as big as palaces. The majority of the city’s inhabitants were Muslim, these days, but there was still a scattering of Jews, Orthodox Christians, and even a few hippies who had forgotten to go home in the sixties.
We passed the UN compound. Lines of white Land Rovers and Land Cruisers were parked outside a square block of concrete and glass. This part of the main had bristled with steel hedgehogs, X-shaped obstacles, placed in the road to prevent the Serb army’s two hundred and fifty or so tanks screaming into the city. Sometimes I’d been able to hear them revving from down town. The hedgehogs hadn’t been the only obstacles you had to try to avoid as you drove towards the airport. There was also any amount of falling concrete, burnt-out vehicles and, now and again, a body or two.
About a K ahead, a bombed-out tower block – what had been the parliament building – loomed above the city centre.
‘Nearly there, Sunny Side Up.’
Jerry said it as I thought it.
I couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t heard that saying for nearly ten years.
We hadn’t talked about Rob and Benzil at all. But then, there wasn’t a lot to say.
The taxi pulled up outside the large yellow cube with a Holiday Inn sign. Last time I was here the ground had been covered with snow, and its nickname was born. It still looked much the same, just a whole lot quieter than when four thousand shells and mortar rounds a day were raining down on the city. To me, it brought back good memories of great chips, and sometimes even sausages when they were on the menu. At least until a sniper got the cook on his way to work one day.
67
The Holiday Inn had been forced to close before the war because it was bankrupt, but as all the other hotels in the city were bombed out one by one, it reopened. Even though the prices rose higher and higher the longer the siege went on, it was never short of guests. It didn’t seem to matter that its upper floors were constantly hammered by Serb artillery, rocket and mortar fire: just like the Palestine, it existed to make cash, and it remained the HQ and doss-house for the world’s media.
Sometimes the power was on, sometimes it was off. Sometimes the rooms were freezing cold, sometimes they were too hot. Whatever, it had to be the only hotel in the world where the most expensive rooms were those without a view. The golden rule of survival was: if you see the sniper, the sniper sees you, and he wouldn’t necessarily be a Serb. This war had attracted weirdos from all over: the neo-Nazis, anyone else who didn’t like Muslims, and the ones who just liked killing people. They all came for a bit of war tourism, were escorted into fire positions on the high ground, and had a crack at anything that moved. There was even some avant-garde Russian writer caught on camera, sniping into the city.
The Firm’s operations room above the cafe was about twenty minutes’ walk away – in peace time – but as much as two or three hours during the siege if the snipers were active and people were backed up on the street corners, waiting for the courage to make a run for it.
When we checked in, the guys behind the desk took our passports as security, just like in the old days. I’d always hated that. I always wondered if it was going to be the last time I’d see it.
The decor hadn’t changed much: still lots of grey ersatz marble covering just about every surface. Even the reception staff still behaved as if a smile of welcome would get them carted off to the gulags.
The Holiday Inn was a lot quieter now that no one was getting shot at and no artillery shells were landing in the lobby, but just as busy. I wondered if it was still a haunt for journalists. Probably not. Sarajevo wasn’t that sort of place any more. There were new wars, new stories. Most of the people milling around looked as if they were here on business. Germans and Turks on cells headed for the lifts, wheeling their smart carry-ons behind them.
A coffee area covered most of the ground floor, with square leather-and-chrome chairs huddled round low tables. In the far corner, the coffee-cum-drinks bar was trying hard to look like a large tent with a stripy canopy above the cappuccino machines and bottles of whisky. The hotel was hollow in the middle. All the rooms were built around the outside walls, so the ten-floor atrium looked like the inside of a state penitentiary. It reminded me of a trip I’d taken to Alcatraz with Kelly.
We got into the lift and pressed for the first floor. Jerry and I were sharing a double this time. The only available singles were on the top couple of floors.
Jerry was still in his own world as we got out and followed the landing. He had to start talking soon.
Room 115 could have been any room in any chain anywhere in the world. It had been redecorated since the war, but dark-wood veneer was still king. And, just like the old days, I found myself looking straight out on to the wreckage of another burned-out building. Not too far beyond it lay the green slopes of Mount Trebevic, the sky above it a flinty blue.
Before the war, Sarajevans used to escape the city heat by cable car to picnic on the mountainside. Then the Serbs came, and they covered Trebevic in land mines. Either I’d read this or seen it on the Discovery Channel, but I knew that most of it was still off-limits. It was known as ‘the lost mountain’.
Jerry threw his new Istanbul bag on to the bed nearest the door. The canvas holdall was a lot smaller than the one he’d arrived with in Baghdad, that was for sure. His bumbag followed.
I stretched out on the other and thought about finding this Ramzi Salkic guy.
68
At last, Jerry opened his mouth. ‘This may sound crazy, but the stuff Benzil and Rob told you about Nuhanovic – it’s kinda made me even more determined to get these shots. Maybe he really can stop some of the madness.’
I looked down at the burned-out building. ‘That’s worrying. Last time you went off taking pictures in this place it nearly got me killed.’
Jerry looked sheepish. ‘I know, I fucked up majorly. But it was worth it. We got to save someone’s life.’ His expression darkened. ‘Don’t you ever want to know what happened up there in the enclaves?’
Not really. He had tried to tell me enough times nine years ago, on the way back into the city. I’d already known as much about the atrocities as I wanted to. I’d told him to keep it for his grandchildren.
I helped myself to a Coke from the minibar. ‘You went up there because the papers were offering a hundred grand for a picture, right?’ What the fuck? He obviously wanted to tell me, so why not listen? At least he was talking.
‘Yup, a hundred grand. Fuck, I’d have run all the way naked with a rose up my ass for that kind of dough. Soon as we heard, Jason and I got a driver and set off north.
‘That road was seventy-five Ks of Dodge City. Two relief workers driving trucks had been killed a couple of days before on the same stretch. We were kinda hyper.
‘Three miles south of the enclave, we hit a Serb checkpoint. Jason was cool at that sort of stuff. He just pulled out a carton of two hundred and did some trading.
‘The village we came into had been totally fucked, man. I mean, every house had been hit. The Serbs had been pounding these guys for months. It was getting dark and we really started to freak, so we tried the UNHCR.’
